Kapò is a very strange picture. It seems director Gillo Pontecorvo was of two minds about the kind of film he wanted to make and the perspective he wished to portray. The film oscillates between dark realism and an unpleasant boring melodrama.
The opening features some beautiful blocking and powerful sequences. One such moment occurs when our protagonist, Edith, returns to her apartment to find her family being thrown into the street and rounded up into trucks. The civilians watching are frozen like glass, while Edith winds her way through them, dreamlike. It creates a powerful sensation, a crystal moment in time where everything is about to change. Pontecorvo’s creativity in staging lasts for the next 30 odd minutes, crafting stark tense sequences of Edith navigating and adapting to life in the camp.
We are introduced to a band of captive women, each with their own unique story. All are wonderfully realised characters. But their personalities are rarely paid off in the film. They fizzle out and become unimportant as the narrative shifts focus. At the heart of this picture is a strong concept. A young woman becoming a Kapo to survive. A Kapo is a prisoner supervisor. They must be cruel, they must be hard, they serve the Nazis because they have no choice. The moral weight of this transformation should be staggering.
I’ll admit I’m actually getting frustrated thinking about the rest of this film. Here’s the short of it. Russian soldiers soon arrive as prisoners at the labour camp and naturally a love story takes centre stage. A woman and a man share screen time under Nazi supervision. What else can they do but fall in love?
A couple of interesting moral dilemmas are thrown weakly at the audience in the final act but by this point the film has lost its steam. The characters so wonderfully set up in the first act are now irrelevant. The horrors and brutality of Edith’s survival are brushed aside. The feminist themes dissolve into thin air.
Kapò has some good moments, even a handful of beautiful ones, but it is ultimately let down by a borderline offensive third act that dilutes its grand conceits in favour of melodrama. Watch the first 45 minutes to the minute for an insightful depiction of life in a women’s labour camp.
Then turn it off.